


All I Have to Give is Everything

by infiniteeight



Category: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Genre: Get Together, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 02:52:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4987327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteeight/pseuds/infiniteeight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Alan Hunley finally finds his soulmate, he's in the middle of tearing apart everything that soulmate cares about. The only way out is forward, and if there's only one gift Alan can give his soulmate, he's going to make it happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not betaed, because I'm impatient and this pairing needs fic if I'm going to lure anyone else into it. :D

There wasn’t a single co-worker who’d believe it, but Alan Hunley had always been a romantic. He’d been dreaming of meeting his soulmate since before his mark came in, a few months before he turned sixteen. When all of his peers were excitedly tracing their marks to show to their friends--a soul mark was invisible to everyone but yourself and your soulmate--Alan had kept his to himself. A soul mark was private, a secret to be shared only with his soulmate. He _did_ share every marked teenager’s brief obsession with short sleeved shirts, baring their forearms even on cold days just in case their soulmate passed by.

Of course, it was rare to meet your soulmate when you were that young. Theories varied on why, from the simple fact that most teenagers didn’t meet a particularly wide range of people to the strings of fate idea that said the marks knew what the formational moments of your life were going to be and took them into account. 

Like everyone else, Alan grew out of the need to bare his arms constantly. But he never lost the urge to glance at every exposed forearm he saw, always searching for his match.

He imagined a thousand different ways it might happen. At the gym, perhaps: a stranger would offer to spot him, and he’d look over at their hand as he reached up to take hold of the weights and see the mark. Or during a dinner out alone: he’d roll up his sleeves before he ate, his attention on a book (or, later, paperwork), and his soulmate would notice and sit down in the empty chair across from him and silently offer their own bared arm. Later, Alan wondered if it might happen on assignment: he’d strip the shirt off an injured teammate, and discover the matching soul mark on a friend.

As he grew older, his fantasies grew more pragmatic. He went to Match Nights, despite their low success rates, and imagined being one of the lucky ones there. Alan kept track of which of his co-workers were single, knowing that people who found their match later in life frequently worked together; when he couldn’t spot their arms casually, they were usually open to a discreet inquiry. 

But for all his fantasies, he never imagined it happening quite like this.

They were two months into the search for Ethan Hunt, and they had a lead that was strong, although not certain. Strong leads brought Hunley to the control room personally. They also brought William Brandt. He wasn’t on the team conducting the operation, of course, but there wasn’t any harm he could do from control, and Hunley hoped he might eventually slip and offer an additional hint. No slip had been forthcoming, so far; Brandt was nothing if not disciplined.

This afternoon, when he stepped into the control room, Brandt had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Noticing, Alan wondered if he was nervous, or if the rolled sleeves were unrelated. As Brandt braced his hands on his hips, Alan’s eyes dropped habitually to Brandt’s bared forearm.

It was there. His mark. The hum of voices in the control room faded into the background. Some small corner of his mind was aware that the lead hadn’t panned out, but for this moment he didn’t care. 

“Something wrong, Director?” Brandt’s tone was polite but cool. Distant. 

Reality came crashing in. Of course it was. Alan was the man who’d shut down the agency that Brandt had devoted his life to. The agency that Brandt had held together essentially single handedly for eight months in the wake of the Secretary’s death. Alan was the man hunting down Brandt’s friend and team leader, the man hauling both Brandt and another friend in for polygraphs on a weekly basis on the razor thin chance they’d let something slip. 

Brandt had taken the job at the CIA, but just because he wasn’t ready to throw his career away didn’t mean that he didn’t see Alan as the enemy. The last thing he’d want to hear right now was that some kind of fate said he should be on the other side. Hell, he might not believe that the soul mark was real; not everyone was as private with their marks as Alan had been, and the CIA had certainly forged them before.

Alan met Brandt’s sharp, inquiring gaze. “No, Agent Brandt, no problem,” he said lightly.

As difficult as things were now, it wasn’t hopeless, Alan told himself firmly. Once they’d brought Hunt in, Brandt would see that there had never been a secret conspiracy organization, that Hunt himself was the source of the chaos. He would understand that dismantling the IMF was regrettable, but necessary. Brandt was an analyst, he could--he would--accept that this was the way to move forward.

And once he wasn’t spending every day watching Alan chase down and interrogate his friends, once they’d put suspicion behind themselves and moved on to truly working together, then Alan would have a chance to show Brandt what kind of man he was. 

They just had to bring Ethan Hunt down first.

***

For a few, brilliant hours, Alan thought fate had smiled on him.

The days since uncovering Hunt’s presence in Vienna had been an emotional rollercoaster. The high of the discovery, the stomach dropping low when Brandt vanished to join him, and then the sudden swoop back up to giddiness when Brandt had called in.

He’d finally seen what Alan had seen, that Hunt’s manic energy was the problem, not the solution. Brandt was coming over to Alan’s side, aligning himself with his soulmate, even if he didn’t realize it yet. The past four months had been the worst kind of strain for Alan, knowing his soulmate was so close and being unable to make the connection. Having recognized the bond, Alan’s whole body was struggling to tune itself to his soulmate’s. Holding back had led first to nausea, then trouble sleeping, and most recently to waves of hot flashes and chills. Alan had gritted his teeth and concealed the effects, because there was nothing to be done about it and no time for weakness. But it would all be over soon. All he had to do was get to London.

Alan couldn’t promise to bring Hunt in alive. It was too important to finish this, and Hunt was too smart; if it was necessary, he’d have to be brought down. Brandt had to know that. Alan would try to keep Hunt alive, but he wouldn’t make a promise that he might not be able to keep. Brandt had come this far, he’d understand.

And then it all fell apart. The operation, Alan’s certainty that he’d done what was necessary, his hope that Brandt would understand and forgive and accept him. Everything.

Hunt was right. The Syndicate was real. Alan had dismantled the only agency with a chance at fighting them. Brandt had never been on his side. It didn’t even matter that Brandt asked Alan to provide cover for him and Hunt, because Brandt wasn’t really trusting Alan, he was playing to his ego and his sense of self-preservation.

Seeing the way Brandt and Hunt worked together, Alan realized that his own inadequacies as a soulmate went beyond his failures in judgment when it came to the IMF. Brandt’s willingness to follow Hunt wasn’t mere blind faith. Blind faith could be broken simply by removing the blinders, so to speak. No, this was trust in spite of Brandt’s own judgment. This was a willingness to walk away from his career, to put his life on the line, because Hunt might need his help. 

Alan had never inspired that kind of faith in anyone. He had hoped his soulmate might be different, but he couldn’t fool himself that he and Ethan Hunt had anything in common. Someone who held Hunt in esteem that high was using criteria that wouldn’t reflect well on Alan.

But there was, Alan realized as he set about selling the story of the attack on the Prime Minister, something that he could do for Brandt that Ethan Hunt never could.

***


	2. Chapter 2

In the wake of Benji’s rescue and Lane’s capture, none of the team were quite sure where they stood with either the CIA or British Intelligence. With Atlee’s exposure, it did seem that MI6 would be in some disarray, so they ended up staying in London, holed up first in the warehouse where they’d done their planning and then in a small hotel when it seemed no one was looking for them.

A week passed, and the chatter that Benji and Luther were monitoring was turning to other events. “We should leave,” Ilsa argued. “Get on a plane, go live our lives. We survived this time, despite Lane and the CIA and MI6. Who says we’ll survive the next time?”

Ethan stopped pacing to raise an eyebrow at her. “Could you really just... live your life? After years on the edge, surfing the adrenaline high, making decisions that _matter_ , could you really spend a month on a beach somewhere without going crazy.” Ilsa hesitated, and Ethan took a step closer to her. “Or more than a month? You’re talking about the rest of your life. Maybe a month off would feel good, but what about two months? Six? A year?”

She pursed her lips. “Maybe not,” she admitted. “But I feel like I need to try.”

“You don’t have to cut all ties to do that,” Luther pointed out.

As if to punctuate his comment, the burner phone discreetly tucked into Brandt’s inside jacket pocket rang.

Luther looked up sharply. “Who the hell is that?” 

“And why didn’t you ditch that phone after seeing the Prime Minister?” Ilsa demanded.

“The only person with this number is Hunley,” Brandt said, calmly taking the phone out of his pocket. “And I didn’t ditch it because I felt we’d need a line of communication if he went along with our plan.” He answered the phone, and the rest of the team bit down on their questions. “Yes, Director?

“I’m glad to see you kept the lines of communication open, Agent Brandt,” Hunley said. “How soon can you and your team be back in D.C.?”

Interesting that that was the question Hunley asked. Not if they wanted to come back, or if they would consider coming back, just ‘when’. Aware that Hunley’s end of the line might not be secure, Brandt replied carefully, “That depends entirely on why we’d be going back.”

“Well, I’m doing my best to explain why Agent’s Hunt’s mission required a cover as extreme as shutting down the IMF,” Hunley said lightly, and Brandt felt like his heart had stopped beating, “but it would certainly help the Senate Committee accept the necessity if you were here to reinforce the point.”

“You realize, of course,” Brandt said carefully, “that I can’t reveal the details of an ongoing operation…”

“...without the permission of the Secretary,” Hunley finished. He sounded amused. “Of course. But we have to get the IMF reinstated and a new Secretary installed before that’s possible. First things first, Agent Brandt.” 

Brandt’s heart seemed to lurch back into motion, at twice the usual speed this time. “I’ll call you with my own ETA as soon as I have it,” Brandt said. The team’s eyebrows collectively went up. “I can’t speak for the rest of the team, but I know they’re eager to see us back in operation officially.”

“Excellent. I look forward to hearing from you,” Hunley said, and hung up.

Brandt turned off the phone and smiled at the rest of the team. “Well,” he said, “not only are we no longer on the run from the CIA, it turns out that we were never on the run from the CIA.”

“I remember a lot of running,” Ethan said dryly.

“And I think I heard you say you needed the Secretary’s permission and something about us being back in operation ‘officially’,” Benji prompted impatiently. “Explain, please.”

“Director Hunley has apparently taken it upon himself to go a few steps further with the story that Atlee attacked the Prime Minister and he intervened,” Brandt explained. He turned to Ethan. “You didn’t simply confront him on your own initiative, you were carrying out a deep cover mission. Shutting down the IMF was a part of that. Hunley didn’t say much, I suspect his end of the line wasn’t sure, but I can make a good guess at the details.

“We,” Brandt gestured at the team, “suspected that the Syndicate had infiltrated our governments at the highest level. We went to Hunley for help--presumably because the IMF was hamstrung in the wake of the Secretary’s death and the ghost protocol--and together we staged the shutdown of the IMF in order to provide an impenetrable cover to Ethan so that he could infiltrate the Syndicate and take them down.” Brandt smiled. “Of course, now that the mission has been accomplished and the Syndicate has been beheaded, we need to reinstate the IMF. The operation, of course, demonstrates that teams like ours are still necessary.”

“I can’t help but notice that all of this paints Hunley in quite a positive light,” Ethan observed.

“Of course it does,” Brandt said impatiently. “And that’s a good thing. Agencies like the IMF need people in their corner with the political connections to protect them from the power plays of those up the ladder of power. When we lost ours--the Secretary--we were shut down. We need someone like Hunley in our corner, and we need him to be as much in favor as possible.”

“Except that Hunley’s priority is the CIA,” Luther pointed out, “not the IMF. How do we trust him?”

“This could be a trap,” Ilsa agreed. “Luring us back to the United States to be arrested.”

“It isn’t a trap.” Brandt’s mind was racing, making connections and seeing the possibilities spin out ahead of him. “Ethan spent the last six months proving just how much better the IMF’s best was compared to an entire team of the CIA’s best. When he thought Ethan was deluded, that made him angry, but--” Brandt cut off Ethan’s protest, “--but when we proved to him that the Syndicate was real and that Ethan wasn’t the threat, he backed us up. Even though it meant admitting that he was wrong, he backed us up.” Brandt stared at the others until they admitted, with reluctant nods, that that was true. “And if we want him to make us his priority, that’s easily done.”

“Really,” Ethan said flatly.

“Really.” Everything fell into place. It was going to come together so neatly. “All we have to do,” Brandt said, “is back Hunley to be the next Secretary.”

The others exploded, but their incredulity didn’t touch Brandt’s sudden serenity. He understood this particular chess game better than any of them. In the end, they’d see it his way.

***

Although bringing the whole team--including Ilsa, although she was technically on ‘leave’ for the moment--back from London was good optics, rebuilding the IMF initially came down to Brandt and Hunley in a conference room with a sea of paperwork. It wasn’t anything Ethan could help with, and he deserved a break after six months on the run, so he was off the hook. Luther was still retired on the books, and while he and Benji would be invaluable when it came time to recruit and settle in a new tech and cyber division, it wasn’t time for that yet.

Before any of that could happen, Hunley and Brandt had to get the administrative framework hammered out and the essential positions filled in with capable people. They could have used the pre-existing IMF structure, but even if Hunley hadn’t been ambitious enough to want to put his own stamp on the Force--and he was--there were parts of the administration that had always bothered Brandt, and he wasn’t about to let this chance to change them slip by.

So the month spent fighting to get the IMF reinstated was followed by weeks spent bent over organizational charts and personnel files. Brandt learned Hunley’s preferences in take out by heart, and that his sense of humor tended towards the droll, invariably finding the odd little quirks in any given file. He also suffered from blinding headaches, almost migraines; Brandt hadn’t noticed that when he was still with the CIA, but he hadn’t seen Hunley in private for any real length of time, then.

But for all his new familiarity, Brandt still wasn’t entirely sure why Hunley had started all of this in the first place. Certainly he was an ambitious man, and resurrecting and heading the IMF would be a nice feather in his cap, but the undercover story in no way _required_ that the IMF be reinstated, and remaining in control of the CIA would have been substantially less risky. After all, the IMF had always been a politically dangerous topic, and recent IMF Secretaries had less than promising fates.

“Something on your mind, Brandt?” Hunley asked.

He must have been staring as he thought. “Yeah,” Brandt said. After all, even when they’d been adversaries, Hunley hadn’t screwed around with him. “Why’d you do it?” He waved around at the paperwork. “Why bring back the IMF? You didn’t need to. Hell, your career has probably lost some momentum; technically, leading the IMF is a lateral move, and we’ve never been particularly popular, only necessary.”

Hunley set down the file he’d been reading and leaned back in his chair, eyes on Brandt. After a moment he took off his reading glasses and gestured with them. “Because you demonstrated that the IMF really is a necessary part of our intelligence apparatus,” he said eventually. “As the one responsible for shutting it down, I felt responsible for correcting that mistake.”

“And?” Brandt prompted. “I can tell that there’s more to it; the pieces of this,” he waved inarticulately, “situation don’t quite fit together.”

“Doesn’t that happen sometimes?” Hunley asked. “Aren’t things that are meant to go together sometimes just… awkward? Not quite right despite themselves?”

Brandt wasn’t entirely sure they were still talking about the resurrection of the IMF. But the answer was the same regardless. “No. If it seems awkward, you just don’t have all the information yet.”

Hunley smiled. “An analyst to the core.”

“So?” Brandt raised his eyebrows.

Hunley didn’t answer right away, instead opening his briefcase and extracting a pill caddy and a bottle of water. Brandt frowned, but Hunley, in the process of taking whatever it was, didn’t notice. Brandt had his expression smoothed out by the time Hunley mt his eyes again and said, “Suffice to say, I felt I owed it to you.”

“To me, personally?” Brandt clarified. “Not to Ethan? He’s the one who spent six months on the run, fighting the Syndicate with no backup.”

“He’s not the one who spent months holding the IMF together by the skin of his teeth,” Hunley countered. “You had to do the Secretary’s job, defend the IMF as an organization, defend your team from the inquiry, and run missions all at the same time, without having any of the formal authority or support the Secretary would have had.” He considered Brandt for a moment. “Frankly, if you had been the only member of the team to return, it would still have been worth putting the Impossible Mission Force back together.”

For a moment, Brandt was at a loss for words. No one had ever put that much faith in him. “Thank you, sir,” he said, eventually. “I won’t disappoint you.”

“I have no doubt,” Hunley said. There was unexpected warmth in his voice, but he shifted back to professionalism so quickly Brandt almost wondered if he’d imagined it. “Mr. Gant, however,” he tapped the file he’d been reading, “I am less sure of.”

“He has all the right qualifications,” Brandt said, but he was only playing devil’s advocate; Gant wasn’t right for the job.

“But a rigid attitude,” Hunley replied. “I’d rather he demonstrated the capacity to be taught.”

Brandt smiled and took the file, setting it aside.

~~~

They started small with the resurrected IMF: just three field teams on a rotation, two on active missions and one in reserve for back up. The ratio of analysts and techs to field personnel was substantially higher than it had been, at least to start. Brandt hoped to keep it that way; he wanted the field agents to have the best possible support, and that meant not overworking or overcommitting those people. Field operations looked more impressive on paper, though, and he knew Hunley might have to compromise in the future to keep their political overlords happy.

For the moment, though, they could have everything just the way they wanted it. Nothing made that more evident than watching from the control room as Agent Brown led her team through their first mission. Brown herself was a veteran of the previous iteration of the IMF; Brandt had worked with her before and she’d been his first choice to bring back. One of her new team members was also from the old IMF (but not a previous teammate), another was former CIA (Hunley wasn’t above poaching from his former employer), and the last was a rookie. The team looked solid on paper, but you never really knew until they were actually in the field.

This first mission wasn’t a milk run, exactly--the Impossible Mission Force didn’t do milk runs except as small elements of much larger operations--but it was was bit of a shakedown cruise, less ‘impossible’ than their usual fare. Still, Brandt smiled as he watched the feeds from the control room. Brown was a steady, confident leader, and it was clear the team was taking reassurance from that, checking in with her often. A little too often, actually, but Brown never showed any irritation, and Brandt was confident they’d back off when they’d settled in.

“I see the target,” McKinley, the former CIA agent, murmured over her comm. She was drinking coffee at a patio table in a small cafe. “Contact in thirty.”

“Copy that,” Brown said. It was McKinley’s first time doubling, but Brown didn’t remind her of that. “Remember, secure the plans first. When you have them, then you can ask a few leading questions.” 

Their new team of analysts thought there was a good chance that the target, Dr. Roland Anthony, was faltering in his commitment to his organization. They had stepped up their operations recently, moving from trading in information and technology to acting to influence those who had been their customers. Instead of remaining one step removed, death and conflict were being laid directly on their doorstep, and it wasn’t sitting well with everyone they employed. The IMF needed more information before they could plan an extraction, they needed to keep the prototype missile plans Dr. Anthony had developed away from the array of warlords it was being bartered to, and they needed to see how a new team did in the field. Why settle for two birds with one stone when you could get three?

Brown moved on. “Agent Joeng, how are your lines of sight?” 

Joeng was the rookie, a sniper, but he sounded perfectly calm. “Clear, sir. I have eyes on Dr. Anthony. There are two goons shadowing him.”

“Good,” Brown said. Two was normal.

The tricky part of this operation was that Dr. Anthony’s contact for this particular client was a woman he knew well, whom he only ever met in public. But McKinley was the perfect double--if Anthony didn’t know his contact, Maria Flynn, so well, McKinley might have been able to pass with a little make up rather than a full mask. Since he did know her that well, they’d not only gone with the mask, they’d carefully duplicated the moles and freckles on her arms and shoulders, left bare by the short sleeved blouse--a duplicate of Flynn’s own favorite--that she was wearing in the warm sun of the afternoon.

“Dr. Anthony,” McKinley said, rising from her seat and smoothly mimicking Maria Flynn’s voice. “So good to see you again.”

“Maria,” Anthony acknowledged. He shook her hand and there was a pause while they seated themselves. On the video feed, a long distance camera pointed over McKinley’s shoulders, Brandt saw Anthony’s eyes drop to McKinley’s hands. He went still for an instant and Brandt cursed.

Hunley, standing next to him, looked over sharply. “Problem?”

“McKinley’s been made,” Brandt said quietly. “Something about her hands.”

“Not her hands,” Hunley realized. “Her arms.”

“I know you’re not Maria Flynn,” Dr. Anthony said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Because Maria Flynn isn’t my soulmate, and you are.”

To her credit, McKinley didn’t show any reaction, except the pause before she spoke as she recalculated her approach. “The fact that you whispered that tells me that you’re not as committed to your current employer as you used to be.”

Dr. Anthony let out a long breath. “I hope to have time to tell you, later, how I got to where I am. But right now I have to ask, can you get me out?”

Damn it. They weren’t organized or equipped for a full scale extraction. Under normal circumstances, if an asset like this unexpectedly asked to be pulled out, they’d establish a method of communication and arrange an extraction later. Anthony wasn’t, after all, in any immediate danger. But Brandt didn’t know if McKinley had the fortitude to leave her soulmate behind.

“Give me a moment to check in with command,” McKinley said steadily. Anthony nodded. McKinley didn’t speak again, and Brandt found himself nodding; she was giving away as little information as possible, knowing that they were listening in.

“Stand by, McKinley,” Brown said. Then, “Agent Brandt, do we need to check with the Secretary?”

Brandt stepped up to one of the control panels and opened his side of the channel. “He’s been listening in, Agent Brown,” Brandt said. They hadn’t wanted her to feel pressured, so they’d let her believe that Brandt was monitoring the op alone. “I’m putting him on now.”

Hunley stepped up to the microphone. “Agent Brown. I know you haven’t had much time to get a feel for Agent McKinley, but I need your best guess of whether or not she’d be willing to leave her soulmate behind. Temporarily.”

“She’s a professional, sir,” Brown said. “And she was damn proud to be recruited to the IMF. I think she’d do it. But sir, I don’t think we need to make that call. This team is green, but they’re confident, and this isn’t a high risk extraction. Agent Joeng can take out the security before they even get close, and I’m betting Agent Kesler,” the other IMF veteran, handling communications and equipment, “is already working on getting us a new exit strategy, since we won’t want to wait until tomorrow for our scheduled flight. All McKinley has to do is get the security to step out of cover.”

“And trust that Dr. Anthony genuinely wants to leave,” Hunley pointed out.

Brown paused. “Yes, sir,” she admitted. If Anthony wasn’t truly on board, it would all go to shit.

Brandt watched Hunley considering Dr. Anthony on the screen for a moment. The doctor was sweating and tapping his fingers nervously on the cafe table top as he waited for McKinley to relay their call. Hunley seemed supremely calm, and Brandt abruptly realized that he had no idea where Hunley stood on the subject of soulmates. In in all the conversations they’d had while they restructured the IMF and picked out the agents they were bringing on board, it had somehow never come up. Thanks to the background Brandt had done on Hunley when they’d be aligned against each other he knew Hunley was unbonded, but that was it. 

Most people met their soulmates before they turned fifty, but it wasn’t exactly unusual to remain unbonded--something like twenty percent of people never met their soulmates at all. At fifty-seven, Hunley was more likely than not to end up in that group, and he had to know it. The question was, was he the type to take it personally? Brandt hoped not. The last few months he’d gotten the impression of a man supremely dedicated to the intelligence community, who wasn’t afraid to be passionate but who could see see past that when a situation demanded reevaluation. Brandt didn’t want to believe that Hunley would be spiteful enough to make leave McKinley leave her soulmate behind just because he didn’t have his own, but soulmates had made people do stranger things, and it wasn’t like there weren’t real operational reasons he could use as an excuse, both personally and publically. Even if those reasons were playing it pretty conservatively as far as the IMF went.

Hunley activated the comm channel. Brandt held his breath.

“Get them both out of there, Agent Brown,” Hunley said.

“Yes, sir,” Brown acknowledged, a grin clear in her voice. 

Brandt quickly stepped forward to speak into the comm. “Have Agent Jeong use tranquilizer rounds,” he interjected. “As far as the security knows, Agent McKinley is Maria Flynn. We might as well inject a little confusion and mistrust into their organization while we’re at it.” Brandt glanced as Hunley as he finished speaking, raising his eyebrows to check that the adjustment was acceptable.

Unexpectedly, Hunley grinned at him as he nodded. Brandt found himself grinning back before he muted the mic and turned his attention back to the screens. God, it felt good to run a mission again.

Brown’s assessment of her team was right on the money. McKinley and Anthony staged a fight, which brought the security out of cover. Jeong took them down with one shot each, using tranquilizers as requested. McKinley pretended to storm out of the cafe and Anthony chased after her. No one raised any alarm, and an hour later they were boarding a plane Kesler had reserved for them.

“Good job, everyone,” Brandt told the control room as the plane taxied down the runway. “The regular shift will monitor the team on their way back; the rest of you are dismissed but still on standby.” About half the staff in the control room went into motion, shutting down their stations and packing up their things. Brandt turned to Hunley, “It wouldn’t be an IMF mission if it had gone entirely to plan,” he said wryly.

Hunley chuckled and took a handkerchief out of his pocket, patting at the back and sides of his neck. Brandt frowned. Hunley hadn’t been worried, Brandt was sure of it. And the control room was, if anything, a bit cool. So why was Hunley sweating? 

“As departures from plans go, I’ll take that one,” Hunley said. He sighed, looking at the screens, though they were dark now. “Agent McKinley is a lucky woman.”

Well, that answered one question. “Soulmates aren’t the be all and end all,” he offered. “My parents were happily married for fifteen years before my mom met her soulmate.”

Hunley turned to him, his expression unreadable. “And what happened then?”

Brandt couldn’t help his grimace, the old pain resurfacing for a moment. “They got divorced,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean that the relationship wasn’t worth something.”

“It hurt you, and presumably your father, when she left,” Hunley observed.

“What, all non-bonded relationships are probably doomed, so don’t bother?” Brandt snapped. 

Hunley flinched minutely. “I wasn’t intending that implication. I apologize, Agent Brandt.” He turned back to the largely empty screens.

Well, shit. Brandt glanced around the control room; most of the staff were gone by now, at least, and he didn’t think they’d been speaking loud enough for the shift in the front row of desks to have heard them at the back of the room. “No, I’m sorry for snapping,” he said. Was Hunley actually a bit pale? “It’s just that most people really do feel that way, and most of them don’t bother with just implying it.” Hunley nodded, but didn’t turn to look at him. 

Brandt ducked his head and lowered his voice further. “My mom had known her soulmate for all of two weeks before she left my dad. They’d been together for eighteen years, were married for fifteen of those. They put a lot of work into that relationship, and she threw it away after two weeks.” For a moment he was fifteen again, staring at his parents in shock when they told him they were getting divorced. “Eventually I got to know my mom’s soulmate,” Brandt went on, returning to the present. “We’re on good terms these days, and my dad got remarried. To a widow, which I’ll admit was a bit of a relief after my mom. But the idea that a mystical bond is worth more than years of learning each other and working to have a strong, healthy relationship still kind of pisses me off.”

Hunley finally turned and offered him a subdued smile. “Are you not looking for your soulmate, then?”

Brandt shrugged. “I’m not _not_ looking. If they show up, so be it. But when I compare my father’s second marriage to my mother’s second marriage, well… I want my relationship to be like his, rather than like hers.”

“Fair enough,” Hunley said. 

“I guess it’s soulmate or nothing for you?” Brandt asked, tilting his head.

“I’ve had a few relationships,” Hunley said, but there was something faintly melancholy about him. “But I could never let go of the idea that there was someone out there meant for me. Someone I was meant for. I know that soul marks are no guarantee that the relationship will go well--we’re all still individuals--but I wanted that connection, and it didn’t seem fair to stay in a relationship when I couldn’t stop looking.”

“There’s still a chance,” Brandt ventured. It wasn’t common to find your soulmate at Hunley’s age, but it wasn’t unheard of.

But the look Hunley gave him went far past melancholy. “No, Agent Brandt, there really isn’t.” He turned and left without another word.

Brandt looked after him for a long time, feeling helplessly guilty. 

***

Worried that he’d done damage to their relationship, Brandt found himself watching Hunley more closely over the next couple of weeks. The more he watched, the more he realized that he had more to be worried about than whether or not their conversation about soulmates had made things awkward. The sudden sweats turned out to be a recurring issue, and Brandt hadn’t been imagining the paleness. As time went on, dark circles emerged under Hunley’s eyes, and Brandt became convinced that he’d lost weight, though the cut of his suits concealed it. 

Checking into Hunley’s medical records--as second in command, Brandt had access--he discovered that the man was, on paper, not prone to migraines, even though he was definitely having them. He also wasn’t on any medication on paper, but he’d been taking something at least three times a day for better than six weeks. And he’d skipped his last physical. Given the upheavals of the last year, with the IMF under review and then shut down and then resurrected, that was easily explained, but Brandt still got the sinking feeling that Hunley had avoided it intentionally.

But when Brandt asked, as discreetly as he could, if everything was okay, if Hunley was well, he repeatedly insisted he was fine.

Watching Hunley as the rest of the team debriefed, Brandt didn’t think he looked fine. He looked like death warmed over. There was a glassiness to his expression that Brandt didn’t think was due to Luther’s admittedly technical spiel, and his forehead was shining with sweat again. 

“Sir,” Brandt interjected as soon as Luther paused. “I think we need to put this on hold while you see a doctor. You really don’t look well.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hunley said, but he sounded almost out of breath. “I can handle a--” Between one word and the next Hunley’s eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped forward over the conference table. 

Brandt was out of his seat in a shot, crouching next to Hunley and pressing his fingers to the man’s neck. “I’ve got a pulse,” he reported, half aware that the rest of the team were out of their seats, too, Benji already dialling 911. Hunley skin was feverish under his fingers. “His heart rate’s definitely elevated.” Benji was giving the operator their location and Hunley’s description. Brandt couldn’t look away from Hunley, crumpled like his strings had been cut, so obviously unwell and so unwilling to say anything even though Brandt had known. God damn it, he’d known, he should have insisted Hunley see a doctor, should have refused to be put off--

“Brandt,” Benji said sharply and he jerked around to look up at his teammate. Benji was still on the line with the 911 operator. “Paramedics are on their way. Have you spotted any symptoms other than the collapse, the sweating, and the elevated heart rate?”

“He’s been having migraines for the past few weeks,” Brandt said. “I checked his file, that’s not normal. I think he’s lost weight. And he’s been taking some kind of medication, I don’t know what and it’s not in his file.”

While Benji repeated that to the operator, Brandt made himself take in the rest of the team. Luther was gone, Brandt wasn’t sure where. Ethan and Ilsa were having some sort of quiet, intense conversation, and as Brandt watched they both tucked their comms, leftover from the mission just completed, into their ears and turned them on.

Brandt took a slow breath and turned back to Hunley. This probably wasn’t an attack, not given how long it had been going on and the way Hunley had been hiding it, but Brandt wasn’t going to argue with Ethan and Ilsa keeping an eye out, just in case.

Hell, he wished it _was_ an attack. Because the other explanation, the simpler explanation, that fit with Hunley’s concealment and his depressed, complete certainty that he’d never meet his soulmate, was that Alan Hunley was dying. 

The arrival of the paramedics broke Brandt out of his focused monitoring of Hunley’s pulse and breathing. They didn’t exactly shove him back, but he was definitely moved out of the way. Brandt squashed an impulse to protest; they could do a lot more for Hunley than monitor his vital signs.

“I’ll be riding along,” Ethan told the paramedics as they maneuvered Hunley onto a gurney and strapped him down. One of them looked up at him, as if to protest, but stopped cold at the look on his face. “Brandt, Ilsa will drive you and Benji to the hospital.”

“Ethan--” Brandt protested. As the paramedics moved out, he took a step after them, but Ethan stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“He needs security,” Ethan said, gently but firmly, “not a distracted friend.” With the paramedics already wheeling Hunley down the hall, Ethan didn’t have time for more. As soon as Brandt nodded, he turned and ran after them.

Brandt took a deep, shuddering breath and rubbed his hands over his face. When he was done, he turned to his two remaining teammates. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Even with sirens on the car and Ilsa’s driving, they got to the hospital long enough after the ambulance that they found Ethan standing guard outside the ER exam room. The doctors within sounded a lot less frantic than Brandt had expected. “What’s going on?” he demanded, looking past Ethan. He couldn’t see much around the doctors.

“They’re not exactly keeping me in the loop,” Ethan said dryly. “But from what I’ve heard, there’s no sign of trauma, so they’re working on stabilizing him.”

“No shit there’s no sign of trauma,” Brandt said. “This has been going on for awhile. Fuck.” He glanced around at Benji and Ilsa and Ethan, all looking at him with concern, and suddenly felt exhausted. “I kept asking if he was okay, and he kept telling me he was fine. I should have known better.”

“I don’t think anyone else noticed there was anything wrong at all,” Benji offered.

“So what do we do now?” Brandt asked. “The Secretary is down, again--” he broke off and closed his eyes. “I should be back at headquarters.”

“Luther is coordinating with Hunley’s staff,” Ethan said. “And we don’t have any missions active at the moment. Everything is under control, Brandt. For now, we wait.”

Ilsa relieved Ethan of guard duty and he and Benji walked with Brandt to the waiting room. Sitting down heavily, Brandt leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t an attack,” he said. “Hunley knew he was sick. He wouldn’t admit it, but he knew.”

“Still, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye on him, just in case,” Ethan replied.

It was a surprisingly short time before the doctor came into the room. “Is one of you William Brandt?” he asked.

Brandt stood up. “That’s me.” The doctor gestured, and the team followed him to a more private area. The doctor glanced at Ethan and Benji and back at Brandt. “It’s okay,” Brandt assured him. 

“Mr. Hunley is suffering from multiple organ dysfunction syndrome,” the doctor said. “In most cases, it’s caused by trauma, but there’s no source of trauma here. The paramedics passed along the symptoms provided at the scene,” he paused.

“By me,” Brandt said. “He and I have been working together closely for the past three months. I’d noticed he wasn’t well, and I asked him to see a doctor, but he insisted he was fine.”

The doctor nodded. “That’s consistent with his current status. Mr. Hunley has been slowly degenerating for quite some time. I’d say it started more than three months ago, actually. “

“So if there’s no trauma here,” Benji asked, “what’s the cause?”

“Unfortunately, we don’t know.”

Brandt stared at him. “You don’t know.”

“Poison?” Ethan suggested.

“We’ll run tox screens, but I don’t think so,” the doctor said. “In some cases like this, there’s a genetic component, but research in the direction is ongoing. I’m sorry I don’t have better news, but all we can do for now is to put him on life support and run further tests.”

“How long?” Brandt asked.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor repeated. “It’s too early to say right now.”

The doctor turned and left. All Brandt could do was stare after him. After a moment, he said, “You two are exchanging glances so loaded I can actually feel them passing behind my back.”

“Does Hunley have family?” Benji asked.

Brandt turned around and frowned at him. “A sister, Brenda. Why?”

“The doctor said there was a genetic component.”

“Maybe we should go talk to her,” Ethan suggested. “See if there’s any history of this sort of thing in the family.” Brandt glanced back the way the doctor has gone. “Ilsa can stay here and keep us updated,” Ethan said. 

Brandt suspected Ethan and Benji were trying to keep him occupied more than anything else, but if there was any chance at all it could help, he had to try. “Yeah, okay.”

***

Brandt had never met Hunley’s sister, but when she opened the door and found the three of them on her porch, she blanched. “Something has happened to Alan, hasn’t it?”

“He’s in the hospital,” Brandt said quickly. He hesitated. “Can we come in?”

She shook her head, but stood back from the door. “Of course.” She looked them over when they walked in, and when they’d seated themselves in the living room, she pointed at each of them in turn. “William, Hunt, and Dunn,” she said. “Am I right?”

“Yeah,” Benji said, clearly surprised, and a bit confused. “Although, usually it goes Brandt, Ethan, Benji.”

Brenda chuckled. “Well, that’s Alan all over. If there’s someone out in front, getting the attention, Alan is sure to be looking behind them to see who else was involved.” She fell silent, looking at her hands. “What happened?”

“We’re actually hoping you can help us with figuring that out,” Brandt said carefully. “The doctors aren’t sure what’s wrong, and they thought it might be genetic.”

Brenda pulled her shoulders back and looked at him, though her eyes were shining with unshed tears. “Tell me what’s happening, then, and I’ll see what I can do.” Brandt walked her through the symptoms, but the more he talked, the more confused she looked. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “There’s no history of any kind of chronic illness in our family. Technically our grandmother had cancer, but it was the slow kind. And I mean really slow--she was diagnosed at thirty-eight and died at ninety-two. We didn’t even know she had it until she went into the hospital.”

“It might not be the kind of thing people talk about,” Ethan suggested. “Were there any mysterious or just strange deaths in the family? Extended family maybe?”

But Brenda shook her head. “We had a bit of a scandal when our uncle Gene died of AIDS, in ‘86, but no one tried to pretend it was anything else, and if we were going to try to cover anything up to save face, that would have been it.” They all fell silent, until Brenda laughed harshly and wiped tears from her cheeks. “God, Alan has terrible timing.”

“Timing?” Brandt prompted.

Brenda looked up at him and tried to smile. “Alan’s been looking for his soulmate his whole life. There was nothing he wanted more. Seven months ago, he called and told me he’d found them. And now this.”

Brandt sat up straight. “That can’t be right,” he said. “Brenda, Hunley-- Alan told me in no uncertain terms that he hadn’t found his soulmate, and that was three weeks ago.”

But Brenda shook her head. “There’s no way. I’ll never forget that phone call. He was excited, but scared, too. I’ve hardly ever heard Alan scared, but he was then. I wanted to meet the person, but he wouldn’t tell me who they were. He said they weren’t exactly on good terms and he needed time to smooth things over before he told them that they were his soulmate.”

Ethan leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees. “So Hunley’s soulmate didn’t know that they were matched?” Next to him, Benji had a tablet on his knees and was tapping on it rapidly.

“Not then,” Brenda said. “But it’s been months.” She looked between the three of them. “Surely they know by now?”

“If they did, wouldn’t Alan have called to tell you?” Brandt asked.

“Yes,” Brenda said slowly. “He called me right away when he found them, and he knew I wanted to me them.” She looked at them with wide eyes. “Does this help?”

Brandt opened his mouth to reply, but Benji beat him to it. “Yes,” he said. “It definitely helps. All of Hunley’s symptoms are consistent with bond deprivation.”

“But soulmates don’t die when they’re separated,” Brenda protested. “My dad died before my mom, and she was fine. Well, not fine, she’d lost her soulmate, but she didn’t get sick.”

“Soulmates don’t,” Benji confirmed, reading from his tablet, “because they still have a completed bond. It’s a physiological change, and death doesn’t reverse it. But this sort of system shut down _does_ start happening when soulmates resist the bonding process.”

“So all we have to do is find whoever Hunley had contact with six months ago who is also suffering organ failure,” Brandt said. And convince that person to initiate a bond that they certainly didn’t want, if they were willing to let two people die for it. Brandt felt nauseous. 

But Benji shook his head. “His soulmate probably isn’t symptomatic. According to this,” he looked up at them and waved at the tablet screen, “the bonding process starts when you recognize your soulmate’s mark. The mark is a kind of signal to the body to start adapting to form the bond. When that doesn’t happen, the body starts shutting down. If his soulmate doesn’t know, the process hasn’t started for them.”

Was that better, or worse? On the one hand, maybe Hunley’s soulmate wasn’t the sort of person who’d let him die. On the other… “The how the hell are we supposed to find them?” Brandt demanded.

“He said he worked with them,” Brenda said quickly. “And it had to have been a man. He didn’t say so, but Alan’s never been attracted to women at all.”

Brandt rubbed his temples. “That’s still dozens of people.”

“Did he say anything else about them?” Ethan asked. “You said Hunley said they weren’t on good terms. Did he say why?”

“No.” Brenda frowned, staring into space for a moment as she remembered. “He said they didn’t like him much right now, but if he could just wrap up his mission, they’d understand, and maybe they’d be able to forgive him.”

“Seven months ago, Hunley’s primary mission was bringing me in,” Ethan said slowly. “Who would need that to be out of the way before they could possibly start to think about Hunley in a better light?”

Brandt looked at Benji, but Benji and Ethan were both looking at him. “It can’t be me,” Brandt protested, his heart pounding. “We’re on good terms now, there’s no reason he wouldn’t have told me.”

“You said he told you three weeks ago that he hadn’t found his soulmate,” Ethan said. “What else did you talk about?”

“We talked about soulmates, and maybe I wasn’t exactly waxing romantic,” Brandt said, “but I never said I didn’t want mine. I said if it happened, so be it. He would have told me!”

“Maybe not,” Benji said. He was looking down at his tablet again. “One of the earliest, most common symptoms of bond deprivation is fixation of purpose.”

“And what is fixation of purpose when it’s at home?” Brandt demanded.

Benji looked up at him. “There’s no need to snap.”

“Benji.”

“Basically, it means once he gets a thought in his head, he can’t let it go,” Benji explained quickly. “In an evolutionary sense, it encourages soulmates to get together as quickly as possible. They recognize each other and once they know they get fixated on the idea of being with that person.”

For a moment, Brandt could only think of his mother, and the bare two weeks between meeting her bondmate and leaving his father. He shook his head. “But Hunley avoided his soulmate, for months.”

“Yeah, but the fixation makes the subject latch onto the thoughts they’re having when they recognize their soulmate,” Benji said. “And apparently the thought Hunley was having when he recognized his was, ‘I can’t possibly have this person until my mission is completed.’”

“But he completed that mission,” Brandt pointed out. “So why not come forward afterward?”

“Because he was four months into believing he could never have you by then,” Ethan said. “That’s a pretty ingrained fixation.” Benji was nodding.

Brandt stared at Ethan and Benji for a long moment. He turned to look at Brenda and she looked so hopeful and God, so much like Alan. Alan, who might be his soulmate. Who was dying right now. Brandt leaped to his feet. “I need to get to the hospital.”

The drive back into the city was agonizing. Traffic was awful, the way it always was in D.C., and Brenda hadn’t lived all that close by. Eventually Benji put him on the phone with Ilsa just so she could reassure him that, while Alan’s condition wasn’t good, he wasn’t going to die while they were stuck in traffic. “He’s got days yet, Brandt,” Ilsa said calmly.

“Assuming it’s me,” Brandt said.

“I’m pretty sure it’s you,” Ethan said. “You didn’t get like this even when the former Secretary was shot in front of you and we had to go on the run. On some level, I think you’re feeling the bond, too.”

Brandt stared out the car window at the seemly endless line of slowly creeping cars. “How much farther?” 

“We’ll get you there,” Ethan promised.

Brandt found himself able to relax just a bit at that. When Ethan said something was going to happen, he damn well made it happen.

Alan’s doctor was waiting for him when they got to the hospital, prepared for their arrival by Ilsa. 

“What do I do?” Brandt asked, as the doctor led the team into intensive care. Alan was hooked up to an IV and heart monitors and oxygen, but he wasn’t intubated yet, thank God.

“Check his arm for the mark first,” the doctor said briskly. “If you can see it, and it matches, then he needs as much physical contact as you can manage.” Seeing the looks they shot him, he didn’t roll his eyes, though Brandt could tell it was close. “Sex isn’t necessary. It’s contact that lets the bond grow; it’s just that most partners experience the most contact during sex.”

Brandt took a deep breath. “All right. Here we go.”

He stepped up next to the hospital bed and looked down at Alan for just a moment. He looked all too vulnerable in the flimsy hospital gown, face largely obscured by the oxygen mask. His arms were bare in the gown, but laying at his sides like they were, the inner forearm wasn’t immediately visible. Gently, Brandt reached out and took hold of Alan’s arm, turning it so that he could see.

His mark was there, clear and stark against Alan’s pale skin.

“Jesus, Alan,” Brandt breathed. He reached up and yanked at his tie, pulling it off over his head and shedding his suit jacket. “Ethan, Benji, could you make sure that Brenda knows what’s happening?” He tossed his suit jacket aside and started unbuttoning his shirt.

“Of course,” Ethan said. “And Brandt?” he smiled wryly when Brandt glanced up at him. “Congratulations.”

Brandt had to laugh. “Say that again when he wakes up,” he said. Tossing his shirt aside, he toed off his dress shoes and climbed up into the hospital bed. It took a little maneuvering, but he managed to get them on their sides, Hunley’s arm draped limply over Brandt’s waist while Brandt pressed his hands against Hunley’s bare back.

“Hell no,” Ethan said when they’d settled. “When Hunley wakes up, I’m going to be just as much of a pain in his ass as I ever was.”

Brandt snorted, but when Ethan turned to go, he caught his eye. “Ethan. Thanks.”

Ethan just nodded and left, ushering the team and the doctor ahead of him.

Alone now, Brandt pressed his cheek to Alan’s. “I’m here,” he murmured. “You can wake up now.”

***


	3. Chapter 3

The climb into consciousness was a long, slow process. The first thing Alan noticed was the absence of the myriad discomforts that had plagued him for the past few months. No headaches, no nausea, no muscle spasms, it was all gone.

The second thing he felt was the warmth. He felt comfortably warm all over, but more than that, he felt warm _inside_. Not like a fever, but like the warm flush of arousal through the veins, except that it wasn’t a sexual feeling.

As the outside world started to impinge, Alan became aware of beeping, and then of an astringent scent. Feeling the pinch of a monitor on his finger, he realized he was in the hospital. But that didn’t make any sense--he felt good. Hell, he felt better than he had in months. Why was he in the hospital?

Almost entirely awake now, Alan realized that he wasn’t alone in bed. That didn’t track with the hospital, either. Reluctantly, he worked on prying his eyes open, determined to figure out what was going on. The decor and the monitors at his bedside confirmed that yes, this was definitely the hospital. A little bit of craning his neck revealed that the person curled up against his chest, their legs tangled together, was William Brandt. Alan caught his breath, his arms tightening around Brandt. 

What the hell had happened? His arms were bare in the hospital gown, which meant Brandt had certainly seen his mark. But Hunley remembered being completely certain that Brandt would never want to be his soulmate. Which didn’t make sense, either, because they’d become friendly over the past couple of months. Nor did it explain why Alan was in the hospital.

Waking up Brandt and asking was the easiest solution, but Alan found himself suddenly, irrationally afraid that if Brandt woke up he’d climb out of bed and nod professionally and vanish. _Don’t be ridiculous,_ Alan thought. But he didn’t move to wake Brandt. Not yet.

A few minutes later, Brandt stirred on his own. His arms tightened around Alan, and as he came aware he nuzzled softly at the base of Alan’s throat. Alan couldn’t help catching his breath. Brandt froze and then leaned back just a bit and looked up at Alan. “You’re awake!” Brandt did move, then, but not jump out of bed. Instead he just shifted up until they were more properly face to face. “How do you feel?”

“Good.” Alan’s voice was hoarse. He swallowed a couple of times and moistened his lips. “I feel good. Why am I in a hospital bed?”

“Because you almost killed yourself being pointlessly noble,” Brandt said bluntly.

Alan raised his eyebrows. “I think that might be the first time anyone’s called me noble.”

Brandt snorted. “Noble is the nice word for it. As far as we can figure, you got it into your head that I would never accept you as my soulmate, and you decided you had to either earn my favor or step aside so that I could have the kind of relationship I wanted. Is this ringing a bell?”

Ah. “In my defense,” Alan said, “when I discovered you were my soulmate, I had recently destroyed the organization you’d dedicated your life to and was in the middle of hunting down one of your friends and teammates while I harassed both you and your other friend and teammate on a weekly basis. I had good reason to think you wouldn’t react well to finding out we were soulmates.”

“I never took any of that personally, you know,” Brandt told him, looking into his eyes. God, Brandt’s eyes were ridiculous combination of colors. “You were doing what you thought was necessary based on the information available to you at the time. With the Secretary dead, our lines of communication to the rest of the intelligence community were a complete mess.”

“I took it personally,” Alan said dryly. “That wasn’t how I ever imagined finding my soulmate. And I’m still not sure why I’m in the hospital.”

“Bond deprivation,” Brandt said. “You got so fixated on the idea you couldn’t have me that it almost killed you. Your whole body was shutting down.”

“Oh.” Alan absorbed that for a long moment. “I didn’t even think about that.” He huffed a laugh. “Apparently I didn’t think much at all.” 

“In your defense,” Brandt echoed him. “Fixation like that is apparently an early symptom of bond deprivation. Just be glad you told your sister about finding your soulmate; I’m not sure we’d have figured it out in time, otherwise.”

“And you don’t mind?” Alan asked quietly. He ran an illustrative hand up Brandt’s bare back. “Being my soulmate?”

Brandt’s expression softened. “I don’t mind at all. I--” he hesitated, looking embarrassed. “I just about lost it when you collapsed. Ethan said he’d never seen me like that.”

“Not wanting me to die isn’t the same as wanting to be my soulmate,” Alan said. “I seem to recall something about wanting a relationship built on hard work and knowing the other person, rather than on a mystical bond.”

“Alan,” Brandt said, exasperated, “you were so worried about having a good relationship with me before we bonded that you walked right into a case of bond deprivation. If you didn’t respect a genuine relationship, you could have confronted me right away and waited for it to reel me in. And I seem to remember us doing a hell of a lot of work together recently. Maybe not on our relationship directly, but I think we laid down a pretty decent foundation anyway.”

“I’m maybe having a hard time believing this is really happening,” Alan admitted. 

Brandt reached up and cupped Alan’s cheek in his hand. “It’s happening,” he promised. Leaning in, he brought their lips together. 

Alan closed his eyes and lost himself in the kiss. It was slow and careful, and it made the warmth inside of Alan grow stronger. He tightened his arms around Brandt, around Will, and Will pressed into his embrace easily, warm and solid and _real_. Alan dared to deepen the kiss, and Will made a soft, pleasured sound and let Alan in for a moment before retaliating, tongues sliding against each other for a hot, breathless moment. The feeling warmth took on a sharper edge and Alan forced himself to break the kiss because they were, after all, still in the hospital.

Will was flushed, his lips a little red. “You are gorgeous,” Alan told him, and smiled when the flush deepened. “And I’m looking forward to getting out of here.”

“It might be awhile before we can be alone,” Will warned. “You gave everyone a hell of a scare.”

“Well, we have time,” Alan sighed. “And you’re worth waiting for.”

Will snorted. “Not too much waiting. That doesn’t go well for you.”

Alan kissed him again.

~End~


End file.
